My station for the contest will be the Commuter Line station in my Riverside Station scene (a pair of two 2-foot x 4-foot tables that together make a 2-foot x 8-foot scene, which extends a bit at each end).
The station itself is a subset of the scene, filling about a six-foot (2m) section of the back half of the tables, from about where the subway tracks cross below to the far right end. In the station are a pair of split island platforms. At the left end is the station entrance, and right now I'm planning a pedestrian overpass linking that to the two platforms. At this end, the four tracks are all on the same level. Moving to the right, the two outer (blue on the track plan) tracks descend almost to river level, while the two center (yellow) tracks climb an equal amount, yielding roughly a 2-inch (50mm) vertical separation by the end of the platforms. Each island platform thus has to split, with half angling down, and half angling up (see the station plan end view below).
All of this was inspired by Ochanomizu Station on the Chuo Main Line and Chuo-Sobu lines (see photo below). In the real station, a four-track route splits, with two tracks (the Chuo-Sobu line, with yellow-stripe trains) climbing and curving left over the river to Akihabara Station and the other two (Chuo Main aka Chuo Rapid line, with orange-stripe trains) ducking under and turning to the right, eventually to Tokyo Station, while the Marunouchi Subway line runs below and across the river. I'm not going to try to replicate that station exactly, but I'm certainly going to draw inspiration from it.
I have a couple of Kato buildings I'm going to kitbash (I think) to make the station entrance and pedestrian bridge. The platforms will of necessity have to be scratchbuilt. Track will be my usual unballasted Unitrack. There will be a pair of starting signals at each end of the platform (these probably won't be live during the timeframe of the contest, but eventually...)
It's an ambitious plan. Considering how slowly I tend to work, it will be interesting to see how far I get by the end.
Photo 1: the overview of the Riverside Station Scene. The green tracks are the Express/Shinkansen Line on the other side of the river, and the Red tracks are the Subway Line crossing the river below the Commuter and Express/Shinkansen Lines.
Photo 2: The subset of the scene that is the Commuter Line Station. The yellow tracks are the Commuter Line itself, and the blue tracks are the branch that connects (off-scene) to the Subway Line, allowing run-through service. The blue track gets a bit complicated at the far right end as it actually forks to allow an eventual connection to the not-yet-built storage tracks. That bit won't be part of the station.
Photo 3: The Station Plan, as described above.
Photo 4: Ochanomizu Station (from
Flickr)
